Chappar (Along the LoC), May 9
The horrors of the October-8 earthquake come alive in the face of Sakina Jaan, a 30-year-old mother of four who now lives more by the side of a Chinar than under a roof.

Being the only component of her home that survived the deadly quake, the Chinar is to Sakina what a man is to his family - a source of strength. Even as this correspondent speaks to her, she mumbles from behind the tree, afraid to step beyond.

To Sakina, the tree means more than the world will ever know. It has been her emotional anchor since the day the earth shook and her husband went missing from the hills of Uri, where he worked as a labourer in a stone-crushing unit.

He was the youngest among three brothers in a family that followed the patriarchal system. While he still lies buried somewhere in the rocky rived bed of Chappar, one of the eight villages of Uri’s Shahadra sector, his brothers have pocketed the relief that came from the government.

With four children to care for, Sakina did not receive a penny because of the state government’s decision to give relief only to the head of the family, which in Sakina’s case was her brother-in-law. She has no idea about the financial package of Rs 1lakh, which the government announced for the next of kin of those who lost family members in the quake. Neither has she got Rs 40,000 in lieu of the plot, which the government promised to allot to those who lost homes and agricultural lands.

Sakina’s misfortune — her farmland still stands by the side of a temporary shelter, one among 67, which Help Age India has provided for the affected families at Chappar. Never mind the fact that it has become unyielding due to the drying up of the water channels in the area, which was the hardest quake-hit area on the Indian side of the LoC.

Just about three km from the LoC, Chappar reported heavy losses suffered by the 68 families that inhabited the region. Of them, Sakina’s case is a typical example of the state government’s lack of foresight in formulating policies for relief distribution. Relief workers counted the number of hearths while distributing packages 
to families.

They gave Rs 1 lakh per family that lost a member and had one hearth for cooking purpose. They ignored the fact that one hearth, in Kashmir’s case, did not mean one family unit. Joint as most families are, every house, on an average, had 10 to 12 members, who are now fighting among themselves for the share of relief.

But Sakina is not fighting at all. She has lost the zeal to fight. On the verge of clinical depression, she lives on charity and barely manages to feed her four children, who go to a makeshift primary school situated close to the village. The eldest of them, Safia, lives to make enough money so that she can take her ailing mother to a hospital one day. As of today, the closest primary healthcare centre to Chappar is 30 kms away. The village itself stands 10 kms beyond the last motorable point in the area. It can be reached only on foot.